The symptoms of Hodgkin lymphoma can be caused by other health problems that are not cancer. So it's important for a child with symptoms like these to see a doctor to find out the cause.

In most cases, lymph node symptoms appear slowly over a long period. Swelling and symptoms can be present for as long as a year before doctors diagnose the disease.

B symptoms tend to appear more quickly and are often present for less than a few months before doctors diagnose the disease.

Hodgkin Lymphoma Diagnosis

To find out whether your child has Hodgkin lymphoma, your child's doctor will start with an exam to look for signs of the disease. The doctor will also ask about your child's health background.

If the doctor thinks that your child may have Hodgkin lymphoma, he will likely perform a
biopsy
to confirm the diagnosis. This may mean taking out part or all of a lymph node or some tissue by surgery.

Another method is to take a sample of fluid or tissue using a needle, called a needle biopsy or fine-needle aspiration. Doctors may do this type of biopsy to check the bone marrow or the fluid around the lungs (pleural fluid) or the fluid in the membrane around the organs of the abdomen (peritoneal fluid).

In most cases, this is not enough to diagnose the disease in children.

Your child's doctor may also want your child to have pictures taken of the inside of his body, such as a chest X-ray,
CT (computed tomography) scan
,
gallium scan
or positron emission tomography (PET) scan.

These are called imaging studies, and they allow the doctor to look for enlarged lymph nodes, tumors or areas where cancer is active.

Your child's doctor may do further tests to detect whether the cancer has spread around the lymph system or to other parts of the body. This helps the doctor tell the stage of your child's cancer, which will be important when it's time to make choices about your child's treatment.

The tests may include these or others:

A complete blood count, or CBC, to tell how many cells of each type are moving through the bloodstream

A blood chemistry analysis to look for chemicals in the blood that are signs of disease in certain organs or tissues

A bone marrow test to see if the disease has spread to the bone marrow

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Seattle Children’s provides healthcare without regard to race, color, religion (creed), sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin (ancestry) or disability. Financial assistance for medically necessary services is based on family income and hospital resources and is provided to children under age 21 whose primary residence is in Washington, Alaska, Montana or Idaho.